J.S. Bach - Vor deinen Thron tret' ich - BWV 668

Here is another of Bach's organ chorale preludes, transcribed for and played on the guitar.

'Vor deinen Thron tret' ich' (Before your throne I now appear) has an interesting story behind it, and although I'm not really in a position to properly explain or analyse the music or its history, I can at least give some notes that help explain what's going on.

BWV 668 is a chorale prelude, meaning that it is a piece of instrumental music which takes as its main thematic material an existing song. In this case the original music that the piece is based upon is a hymn entitled 'Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein', which was originally written by Paul Eber in the 16th century. The source melody (or cantus firmus) was composed by Louis Bourgeois, also in the 16th century. Bach had previously arranged this hymn as BWV 431, as below:



If you listen there, you'll note that there are four main melodies, each separated by a fermata (pause). It is these four which become the source for BWV 668.

Reasonably early in his career, Bach created an organ chorale prelude from this piece, BWV 641, under the original title 'Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein' which I have previously transcribed below:



and as played in the original:



What Bach does with BWV 641 is create an accompaniment which is based upon the melodies of the original hymn, but then adds an ornate cantabile melodic line over the top, which I'm sure you'll agree is rather exquisite.

'Vor deinen Thron tret' ich' actually exists in two different versions. BWV668 is included in the 18 Great Chorale Preludes, and actually consists of a fragment (about two thirds) of the entire composition, copied out by someone other than Bach. BWV668a is the same piece, complete, with slight differences, which was included (under the title 'Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein') in the original publication of Art of Fugue, published after Bach's death in 1751.

There is a story that was perpetuated by Bach's son CPE Bach, that his father dictated the chorale directly from his deathbed. This is now considered to be rather flamboyant myth-making, which gave the piece the nickname 'The Deathbed Chorale'. What is actually now understood to be the case is that BWV668a was a piece that was just lying around (Bach was an inveterate re-worker of old material), which Bach decided to put more work into as he lay dying, meaning that although it was not composed out of nowhere, it was still the very last thing that he worked on, and thus a significant artistic statement.



Musically it's really quite complex. It is built in four sections, all composed from fragments of the original hymn melody, diminished, inverted and contrapuntally developed. These lead into statements of the cantus firmus, clearly taken from BWV 641, albeit with the ornaments and floridity removed, before each time the all but one of the voices drop out for another development section. There's a certain plodding quality to the rhythm, which is pretty uneventful, but the level of harmonic interest is high. This regular and systemic feeling is common to some of Bach's large fugues, and perhaps has a certain mood in common with Beethoven's 'Heiliger Dankgesang', another piece closely linked with illness, which also builds slowly and methodically out of simple contrapuntal blocks.

As for the guitar, it's actually quite interesting how snugly it fits onto the instrument. The piece is in G major, and didn't require transposition to be playable (unlike BWV 641, which needed to be moved to D major). G major on the guitar works reasonably well if the 6th string is tuned to D, which means that a low D (the dominant) can be played open beneath the lowest G on the instrument (which thus occurs at the 5th fret). Very few notes, if any, had to be omitted, although there are problems caused by the occurrence of tones on the organ sustained over multiple bars - on occasion these have been rendered as repeated notes. The sections in four parts are particularly satisfying, although the fact that they are so readily playable on the guitar is perhaps down to the lack of rhythmic variety, rather than any particular skill on my part.

Some idle sketches

So here's a couple of little musical items recently saved to disk.

One is a simple sketch attempting to evoke a certain melancholy, utilising a recording I made of the beautiful people hiding underneath the awnings as the Saturday market got unexpectedly drenched a few weeks ago. The guitar comes from a previous recording of mine, and the voice will be obvious to some and perhaps not to others. Those who recognise the speaker will probably find the whole thing too melodic, but oh well.



And then the other is a hastily recorded attempt at Bach's famous organ chorale prelude 'Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ' BWV 639. This has been transcribed for guitar and recorded by both Paul Galbraith and Alexander Vynograd on their eight-string guitars, and also by Graham Anthony Devine on a standard guitar, and there's probably others I've not heard. My transcription is I suppose closest to Devine's, although I attempt to render ornaments that he leaves out, and we have differing octave shifts at various points (not to mention him being a professional and everything). Anyway, it's too loud, the tempo's all over the place, and there's squeaks aplenty, but it's done.

J.S.Bach - Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein - guitar

It's been half a year since I recorded anything, which surprised me when I realised it. I've been playing in the background, trying to keep practicing, when I can fit it into the gaps between 'real' work and life. I certainly haven't transcribed anything recently, but the other day, when working on 'Ich Ruf' zu dir, herr Jesu Christ', which has been regularly transcribed by others, I had a first listen to the full set of Bach Chorale Preludes, and one in particular just jumped out at me.

'Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein' (When we are in our greatest distress) BWV641 is unique amongst these organ works for its highly ornamented melody, giving it a most cantabile quality, indeed the steadiness of the accompaniment gives me the impression slightly of an operatic recitativo. To me it has a lot in common with the Andante from solo violin sonata BWV1003, with their slow pulses and achingly sad major tonality, and of course, when played on the organ, it has an unmistakably funereal air, and as the highly church-like final cadence fades out I always half expect a minister or priest to commence with a solemn eulogy.

Musically it never strays far from home, only briefly making its way out into the dominant and relative minor keys, but it has certainly hints of that same modal feeling which makes music like the Heiliger Dankgesang so very very powerful, and I'm I can hear hints of the suspensions which mean 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen' makes my hair stand on end every single time.

I swapped the key from G into D, as you so often have to do with the guitar, but I was most surprised to find that the melody was thus reasonably comfortably brought into the range of the instrument. The pedal line only required a few octave jumps to fit, and luckily the important descending melodies didn't have to be broken across octaves. The inner voices required a bit more tweaking - long held notes don't really make sense on a plucked instrument, so the recitativo aspect is more pronounced, and occasionally the voices had to be swapped. It's also not that easy; four part harmony on a guitar never is, even at a slow tempo, so there are the usual scrapes, pauses and mistakes that come from being an amateur. But it's a most exquisite piece of music, and I'm pleased that it can be played on the guitar without too much fuss.

Some notes on Bach.

If it’s alright with you I’d like to share some notes on Bach.

There are a few little interesting historical anomalies that mean that there’s something really rather interesting about playing J.S. Bach on the guitar. The first is the fact that the guitar is a classical instrument which only really became ‘serious’ in the 20th century, meaning that its repertoire is a) distinctly limited, and b) mostly rather lightweight, decorative stuff, even at its peak only rising to a kind of banal romantic whimsy. This has led to the guitar being a predominantly solo instrument: not being part of the romantic orchestra and not having many significant ensemble parts written for it, guitarists generally perform alone, like pianists. Furthermore, if the performer finds the general repertoire uninteresting, then they are forced to play transcriptions of works for other instruments; this has become an integral part of playing the instrument, which my amateur attempts at Chopin’s preludes attest to.

As far as Bach is concerned, there are two things we might note; one of which is that as a Baroque composer, the instrumentation of his works are somewhat malleable- there were far more different instruments in common usage back then, and a great many works are orchestrated for whichever musicians happened to be at court at that time. Furthermore, there are a number of instruments which are somewhat unclear - the mystery five stringed cello from BWV1012 for example, or the debate as to whether or not Bach even wrote music for the lute, or rather the gut-stringed harpsichord called a lautenwerk that he certainly owned a couple of. It seems that there is a certain ‘interchangeability’ to Bach’s music, where, especially with its famous logical consistency, not to mention his own habit of transcribing, it lends itself to being moved from instrument to instrument.

So with this in mind, I’ve recently been playing Bach almost exclusively (bearing in mind any playing at all has to fit in the cracks between Job 1, Job 2, freelance work, not dying, and all the other things I regularly struggle with), and have alighted upon a ‘core’ selection of works to play. Yet another auspicious aspect of Bach’s music is his writing for solo instruments, for so long dismissed as mere studies, but then so unbelievably influential over new music in the 20th century. It is these that form the basis of what I’ve been playing.

Lute Suites BWV995-1000

As I mentioned above, the suites for lute were almost certainly not written for the actual lute, and are actually keyboard music with a lighter polyphonic texture than usual, and I generally play the transcriptions for guitar by Jerry Willard.

BWV 995 is Bach’s own transcription of Cello Suite 5, BWV1011 with added voices, and so I consider it part of that work.

BWV996 is a Suite in E minor, with some very challenging three and four part writing, with the initial Presto and final Gigue really impressive.

BWV997, another suite, is most notable for a long, powerful minor-key fugue.

BWV998 is the serene Prelude, Fugue and Allegro, a beautifully majestic mini-suite which is an absolute joy to play, especially the fugue and its slow build-up of its three parts.

BWV999&1000 are a prelude (akin to a minor key version of the prelude of BWV1007) and a fugue that is based upon the violin fugue from BWV1001, one which was a favourite piece of Julian Bream.

As well as all these, BWV1006a is Bach’s own elaboration of 1006 for the lute, which is best played in place of 1006.

Violin Sonatas and Partitas BWV1001-1006

Where the lute suites are often richly polyphonic, the violin works are much more varied - a great number of them are composed of single lines, where all harmony is implied, while on the other hand, there are a number of pieces which utilise all four strings on the violin, giving serious polyphony. I generally play Tadashi Sasaki’s transcriptions, which maintain all the original keys.

BWV1001 in G minor has an incredible prelude, all ornament and lugubrious harmony, a real joy to play, including just the most exquisite deceptive cadence near the end. It’s followed by a fugue, a siciliana and a solid presto.

BWV1002 is rather long, and contrasts a series of dance movements with Doubles in single lines.

BWV1003 was transcribed by Bach himself for the harpsichord, and so there is a version of much thicker texture and ornaments that the performer can pick and choose from. This sonata is completely dominated by the Andante, a piece of unbelievable spiritual calmness and power, one which Bach actually made worse by elaborating it for the keyboard. I was lucky to hear this played by Frank Peter Zimmerman as an encore this summer at the proms, Mein Gott!

BWV1004 is the D minor partita, which is most famous for the Chaconne, which completely dwarfs all of the movements preceding it, for good reason: without hyperbole, it’s one of the most incredible achievements in all music, grandiose, tortured, passionate, sweeping, emphatic.

BWV1005 is another sonata, with a gigantic fugue as its second movement. What is most exciting about this one though, I would say, is the faltering, heartbeat-like prelude, building from near silence into glorious, churning, four-part grandeur.

The prelude of BWV1006 is a guitar favourite, and for good reason. Its effervescent, joyous, rolling rhythm creates a wonderful web of sound that is ideally suited to the guitar, and as I’ve mentioned, there is a ready-made Bach transcription for multi-stringed instrument. In my opinion, however, the rest of the suite can’t really match up to it, despite its charm.

Suites for unaccompanied cello BWV1007-1012

It’s a little bit harder to do these ones justice, such hallowed works, inextricably tied to Casals and his grainy, over-romantic resurrection of what were once simply practicing etudes. The least polyphonic of Bach’s solo instrumental works (not counting the flute partita), they are also the most awkward to transcribe. Unlike the violin works, which can literally be played off the stave in the original without edits, the cello suites have to be completely transposed in order to fit the guitar. Furthermore, decisions have to be made as to how to treat the texture of the pieces - the guitar, charming though it is, simply cannot compete with the cello in the power of a single line, and so the suites can sound naked in a lot of places if they are not dressed up. However, that opens cans of worms about how much tinkering one is allowed to do to the beauty of the original. I’ve encountered a variety of approaches, and I think it depends upon what each of the suites demands in its own logic.

Everyone knows BWV1007! It’s got to be one of Bach’s most famous pieces, recognisable from a million recordings, the background of a innumerable films and so on. I play a transcription by John Duarte, which has become a classic in its own right. He fills the texture out considerably, making for quite rich and challenging pieces, which I think suits the jovial nature of this suite.

BWV1008 is the opposite - sparse, melancholic and vulnerable, to me it sounds better with its nudity emphasised. I haven’t found a satisfactory transcription of this one, so I’m working on my own at the moment, which I’ll probably continue editing as time goes on.

BWV1009 also has a satisfying edition transcribed by Duarte, with slightly less added texture but still a rich and open sonority is achieved.

BWV1010 is proving slightly tricky. The transcription I’m working with happens to be in the same key as BWV1009, and despite me not playing one after the other, I feel that they ought not to be structured in this way. I’ll have to have a further think about this one.


As I mentioned previously, Bach himself filled out BWV1011 into BWV995, and this is excellent help in deciding how to go about playing the others. This is the home of the sarabande, that timeless single melody which sounds like it could easily have been Webern. It’s hard to achieve the same gravitas on a guitar, but it’s worth trying.

And of course, BWV1012, the mighty end to the suites. This is particularly challenging, featuring quite a lot of passages of incredible speed and difficulty, written as it was for the mystery five-string cello (which some believe might have been more like a viola!). Again, I have no decent transcription to work with, so I’m editing it myself. The highlight just has to be the overwhelming, titanic prelude.

So overall that’s eighty-three movements and almost five and a half hours of music to play through (I haven't included the flute partita because I don't know if I can be bothered at the moment). It’s very comforting music; in turbulent times, both worldly and personally, there’s something steady and firm about Bach’s formality, his a-historicism and pre-modern sensibility, that seems like the right thing for me now. I’m still working on transcriptions but I have much less time for that now. We’ll see what happens, but I’m quite keen, if I get bored of this regime, to start really working on some of the more modern C20th guitar works, of which there’s reassuringly quite a lot. On the other hand I have some transcriptions of Bach's keyboard music (including some quite infamous Well Tempered Clavier transcriptions) which if I'm feeling very confident about I may try to work on in future.

Mahler - Kindertotenlieder 1/5

It's about time I tried to squeeze one of these out.

Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, (Songs on the Death of Children), have to be the apotheosis of a certain  conception of Romanticism in music; there's probably nothing out there more bleak, more morose, more histrionic, perhaps no more extreme example of the quintessentially romantic intertwining of natural phenomena and emotional states. But at the same time, it is also one of the first proper stirrings of musical modernism, with its introduction of the stripped down chamber orchestra at the very height of the trend towards musical gigantism, and its frequently barren, wandering counterpoint laying the seeds of the second Viennese school's sound world and texture.

Composed between 1901-04, there are five songs in the cycle, settings of poems by Friedrich Rückert, on the death of his own child. The one that I have transcribed here is the first, "Nun will die Sonn' so hell aufgeh'n", with the text as follows:

Nun will die Sonn' so hell aufgehn,
Als sei kein Unglück die Nacht geschehn!
Das Unglück geschah nur mir allein!
Die Sonne, sie scheinet allgemein!

Du mußt nicht die Nacht in dir verschränken,
Mußt sie ins ew'ge Licht versenken!
Ein Lämplein verlosch in meinem Zelt!
Heil sei dem Freudenlicht der Welt!

Which translates as:

Now the sun will rise as brightly
as if no misfortune had occurred in the night.
The misfortune has fallen on me alone.
The sun - it shines for everyone. 

You must not keep the night inside you;
you must immerse it in eternal light.
A little light has been extinguished in my household;
Light of joy in the world, be welcome.

(from here) 

The music itself is of remarkable contrast, beginning with a weightless counterpoint in diminished harmony, before chromatic rises and falls lead to an emphatic D minor. There are the usual Mahlerian major to minor modulations, and a more lush, textured section with a typically romantic arpeggiated harp part. The climax is a tempestuous passage which slips sideways between chords before dropping back with resignation into the main theme.

Transcribing it for the guitar is both simple and bloody difficult. The fact that the piece is in D minor means that it's well suited to the instrument's own sonority, and didn't require transposing. However, in order for the piece to make sense on its own, and also perhaps to abstract it a little from its more 19th century connections, I have also decided to render the vocal line as part of the transcription. In the more spartan passages this is not really a problem, but in the more complex section this adds a whole extra voice on what is already quite a tricky passage, with at least three independent voices requiring expression. You can hear that it's not exactly easy to achieve, although as usual a more skilled player than I could probably get more out of it.  As with many transcriptions there are points that require artificial harmonics, in this piece more so than usual, and getting the guitar to do justice to the dynamic range of the piece is not easy either. That said, I'm quite pleased that it has been possible to play the piece without chopping huge amounts of sound from it, so it's at least a small success.

As you can imagine, the undecided straddling of the romantic and modernist views of the world appeals to me greatly, so I hope you find that I haven't butchered it too much.

Chopin - Prélude op.28 no.13 in F sharp

Another installment in one of my slowly moving background projects.

This is perhaps the most sentimental of the préludes: if we're being a little harsh we must admit that it's pretty saccharine. However, it is not without interest; the slippery chromatics in the base are satisfyingly complex, the major key cousin of the super-chromatic étude op.10 no.6, while the trio features two somewhat jazzy II-V-I progressions with a delicate stress on the major seventh in the melody.  Furthermore, the trio features some interesting modal harmony, which sounds surprisingly modern if listened to closely.

The transcription presents a couple of challenges; the chromatic line at times fits perfectly under the hand and at others is rather uncomfortable, and as it is played mostly on the lowest strings you can hear that I've had trouble preventing squeaks and creaks as the left hand voicing shifts around. There are also a couple of polyrhythms, one is 5 over 6: a challenge to achieve in both hands at once. In the trio, the ornamental melodies necessitate leaving a rest where the piano's left hand part should be, and overall it should be played far more smoothly than I've achieved here. Lastly, the high notes in the last few bars are played as artificial harmonics, which presents its own little challenges, although is in keeping with the way it's played on the piano.

Only time will tell if I ever get the chance to finish these all off, it'll probably take at least a few years and who knows what will be happening then. There are ten done, there's a good few that are written but need to be thoroughly practised, and we'll see if I can make rudimentary recordings as we go along. I'm pretty shy about showing the transcriptions themselves, but maybe at some point I'd like an expert to have a look at them.

Anyway, more architectural stuff to come...

Chopin - Prélude No.21 in B flat, op.28

Another prélude; this time the slinky and oceanic No.21.

This is the ninth I've 'finished'. I think the transcriptions themselves are alright, but obviously my technique isn't really up to scratch for some of them, and it's doubtful whether any of the super-difficult ones (no.5, no8, no.16 (!!!), no.24) will ever be possible for me to play. I'll keep going though, see how far I can get.



Hope these are enjoyable in some way.

Some Préludes

I finished transcribing a few more Chopin préludes recently; here they are:



So that's 8 out of the 24...

What have I done?

What have I done recently then?

I wrote a review of François Dallegret's exhibition at the Architectural Association for BD. It's here, although paywalled. Dallegret is perhaps the lost member of the late 60s / early 70s utopian bunch of architects, too idiosyncratic to pin down and probably not ambitious enough to end up as powerful as the rest of them.

I also wrote a review for the Architect's Journal of the book 'RUINS' from the series 'documents of contemporary art', which is here. It's funny, the book that I have coming out soon deals with three of the themes of these books quite heavily - first they did ARCHIVES, then FAILURE and now RUINS. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that really, perhaps the book is coming out too late for the wave of interest but then it was written what feels like a ridiculously long time ago, so who knows. One mustn't expect too much anyway... Still, read the book - it's ace, well worth it.

More of my short journalistic work is in this month's ICON, where I write various pieces about Herzog & de Meuron, Ma Yansong, and Coop Himmelb(l)au. 

I went to Zagreb, which was great. I gave a talk about the ArcelorMittalOrbit sculpture, which I've written about on here quite a few times before. I was speaking as part of this event, along with Mark and Owen, who both gave very interesting talks, despite me still not being able to muster a toss about Pulp... Zagreb was a fascinating place, where I met some very lovely people, and it is also blessed with some incredible architecture. I also saw the funniest thing that I've seen in a long long time, which I hope I can share with you sometime soon.

On matters music/hobby related, two more Chopin preludes:

Chopin - Prelude No.7 in A - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht
Chopin - Prelude No.20 in C minor - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht

Oh well...

Strauss, R - Morgen!

Strauss, R. - Morgen! op.27 - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht

Und morgen wird die Sonne wieder scheinen

und auf dem Wege, den ich gehen werde,

wird uns, die Glücklichen sie wieder einen

inmitten dieser sonnenatmenden Erde…

und zu dem Strand, dem weiten, wogenblauen,

werden wir still und langsam niedersteigen,

stumm werden wir uns in die Augen schauen,

und auf uns sinkt des Glückes stummes Schweigen... 

And tomorrow the sun will shine again

and on the way that I will go,

will she us, the happy ones, again unite

amidst this sun-breathing earth,

and to the beach, wide, wave-blue

will we still and slowly descend

silently we will look in each other's eyes

and upon us sinks the mute silence of happiness

(between you and me, it's been quite a tricky month...)

Beethoven - Heiliger Dankgesang

Beethoven - Heiliger Dankgesang, op.132 (fragment) - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht
Here is another fragment of music for you. This is a portion of Beethoven's 'Heiliger Dankgesang', or song of holy thanks. It's a magnificent example of modal writing, with barely any accidentals in the long exalted passages from which my little transcription comes, and an all-over mood of almost unbearably serene melancholy.

If you're not already familiar with it you might actually recognise the piece from its use in Keiller's 'London', where it bestows the drabness of quotidian London with an exquisite shimmer of yearning.

A wee update.

Here are a few things that I've done / been up to recently:

If you've ever come round this way at all in the last two years (TWO YEARS! I know...) you might be aware that I'm 'architecture correspondent' for ICON magazine. Well; issue 101 is out now and in there you'll find the usual roundup of what's new in architecture, in this case a crystalline sports complex in China and a strange japanese bridge structure that pretends to be a massive version of a traditional east-asian timber joint detail. Further in however, and there's a full-length interview with Shiguru Ban, discussing the varying strands to his career and his attitude to architecture in general. It's worth reading just to get a sense of the way that Ban manages to conceptually spin the plates of structural experimenter, fashionable designer, recycling advocate, disaster relief specialist and so on...

I've got a few articles, reviews, lectures in the pipeline. I'll try to remember to let you know about them when they turn up, try to get the muddy, near-ossified juices of self-promotion flowing.

In quieter moments I've been engaging in musical activities, when time allows. In the last week or two this has thrown up the following little ditties:

A Cat's Skeleton by entschwindet und vergeht
This is a little sketch I made, featuring a little clip from the cheery kitchen sink/apocalypse TV drama 'Threads' from 1984. I guess the fact that the clip shows a crackly vhs recording of a BBC children's educational programme being played to post-nuclear holocaust weans puts this very much into the venerable tradition of hauntoyadayada.

Schubert - 'Wehmut' D.772 by entschwindet und vergeht
Slightly more serious here, I've transcribed and recorded a guitar version of Schubert's lied 'Wehmut' (melancholy), which is a typically 'Sturm und Drang' kind of a piece, although significant here because the poem, by Matthaus von Collin, goes a little something like this:

Wenn ich durch Wald und Fluren geh',

Es wird mir dann so wohl und weh

In unruhvoller Brust.

So wohl, so weh, wenn ich die Au

In ihrer Schönheit Fülle schau',

Und all die Frühlingslust.

Denn was im Winde tönend weht,

Was aufgetürmt gen Himmel steht,

Und auch der Mensch, so hold vertraut

Mit all der Schönheit, die er schaut,

Entschwindet, und vergeht.

Totenfragment

Strauss, R - Im Abendrot (fragment) by entschwindet und vergeht

Here's the introduction to Richard Strauss' "Im Abendrot" (At Sunset), one of the Vier Letzte Lieder.

Chopin - Prelude No.22 in G minor

Chopin - Prelude No.22 in G minor by entschwindet und vergeht

Another of Chopin's Preludes given the once over by my clumsy fingers. This one is nasty, brutish and short, with a usually thundering bass melody (in octaves on the piano) being played stacatto entirely by the thumb, with the other fingers left to render the syncopated, angular chords draped over the top. I must say it's quite fun to bash the guitar around a bit in a way that isn't normally done, but I suppose that to play this piece properly requires a bit more precision than I've got, what with my miniscule practise regime these days.

Mahler - Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen by entschwindet und vergeht
Recently E&V; was possessed by the desire to transcribe this most exquisite of Mahler's 'Rückert Lieder', and here is the initial result.

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,
Mit der ich sonst viele Zeit verdorben,
Sie hat so lange von mir nichts vernommen,
Sie mag wohl glauben, ich sei gestorben.

Es ist mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen,
Ob sie mich für gestorben hält,
Ich kann auch gar nichts sagen dagegen,
Denn wirklich bin ich gestorben der Welt.

Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgewimmel,
Und ruh' in einem stillen Gebiet.
Ich leb' allein in mir und meinem Himmel,
In meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied.


I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may very well believe that I am dead!

It is of no consequence to me
Whether it thinks me dead;
I cannot deny it,
for I really am dead to the world.

I am dead to the world's tumult,
And I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love and in my song!

The text is your typical world-weary romanticism, but you might notice that the music is very much the prototype for the far more famous 'Adagietto' from Mahler's 5th symphony, and it's generally thought that this lied is very much inspired by Mahler's burgeoning romance with Alma Schindler.

The transcription is not just of the accompaniment, but includes and attempts to render the vocal line in a prominent manner. The performance is admittedly rather sketchy, with great hesitation: this is basically a result of my haste in recording the piece, meaning that the fingerings (some of which are really rather awkward) have not been properly worked out.

I hope this pleases at least one person out there.

Chopin - Prelude No.14 in E flat minor - Guitar arrangement by E&V;

Chopin - Prelude No. 14 in Eb minor - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht
Here's another arrangement that I recorded the other day, as usual it's bloody scrappy...

Surplus surplus surplus

Here are more things to look at:


A video from the NYT about an unfinished Venezuelan skyscraper that is heavily squatted. If you disregard the pretty clunky politics then it's rather interesting.

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Two brilliant posts by Adam Curtis. I've mentioned it before, but his blog really is something else. As the nuclear accident at Fukushima rolls on, Curtis dug out a near-20 year old film he made about the nuclear industry, which is -as you might imagine- prescient.

And then, what with the fact that we Brits are suddenly and without warning committing belligerent acts in North Africa, Curtis has prepared a potted history of humanitarian intervention, which is consummate. It also features a brilliant final line which is well worth sticking around for.

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An excellent post on Bahrain by Bauzeitgeist, about revolution in a landscape of malls and business parks.

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There's a Xenakis Symposium down at Goldsmiths, this weekend. I might pop down if I get the chance, and you should too!

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The incomparable Giovanni Tiso has written a piece at his Bat Bean Beam blog that is just blistering, about Blair and his mediations. If you don't know it yet, his blog is both consistent (one big post a week), and consistently excellent.

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Francois Roche is being weird, as usual. Is this a rare example of a principled architect, or is it simply him showing off and playing up to his status as 'crazy frenchman'? I think I've met only one person who studied at Sci-Arc, and they were an arrogant cock, so there you go... Actually, hang on, I interviewed Benjamin Ball from Ball Nogues and he was lovely, so scratch that!

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Chopin - Prelude No.2 in A minor by entschwindet und vergeht
Another arrangement by yours truly. I'm trying to record them now; as I've written (or almost written) so very many, I have gotten archive fever. This one is a bit sketchy but it's done, so I can move onto something else.

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Geoffrey Hill's inaugural lecture at Oxford is online. I'm fairly new to his work compared to some people I know, but well, you know, everyone loves a bit of 'pinnacled corn'...

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And there is far far far too much news right now. Thoughts go to the Japanese, of course, and Libyans, and Bahrainians, and Yemenis, etc. etc.

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Back here in Blighty, we had a march the other day, which I attended.
I attended because I care about other people in the world, and also because I think that those in charge of our government and economy are thoroughly incompetent and must be immediately stopped from enacting their spiteful, vindictive, petty, damaging, greedy, myopic, thuggish agenda. It's as simple as that really.

Im Treibhaus

There will be nothing on here for the next two weeks as I'm taking what feels like a well-earned break. In the meantime, here's a recording I made of my own arrangement of Wagner's 'Im Treibhaus' from the Wesendonck Lieder, as mentioned previously here.

I'm slightly pleased with having done an arrangement of this piece, if only for the fact that a German Romantic lied about being melancholy in a greenhouse more or less covers all of what I've been talking about for the last year or two. Add to that the sheer morose joy of the repeated iv-i-iv-i (in minor, of course) and you have hopefully enough to temporarily fill the 'desolate, empty, horrible void' of my absence(!)

A very brief note on arranging.

One of the most common textures in piano music is a slow right hand part with a quicker left hand part, often outlining a self-similar arpeggio whose consistency ties the piece together logically, and whose variation helps to emphasise the harmony of the piece. When arranging piano music of this character for the guitar, there are a few very common problems that occur. I'd like to have a wee look at them, using bars 18-19 of Chopin's Prelude No.3 in G as the basis.

Example 1
This is the original music written as a guitar part (on one stave and written an octave above natural) We're in the sub-dominant region at this point, and in a few bars we'll prepare for and move onto the last cadence. At the moment though, it looks pretty non-sensical when written out this way, we'd need a lot of extra guitar and a few new hands to play it.


Example 2
Often the first step in arranging piano for the guitar is to move one of the hands a whole octave. Depending on whether you're transposing (we're not here), it's usually pretty obvious which hand to move, one usually drops the right hand, but that lowering is somewhat offset by the brighter tone of the guitar. Often various sections of a piece will have to remain and others moved up or down, and that presents its own set of problems. Another thing that is usually helpful is to get rid of doubles, which we've done here, as the low E is not a significant voice in the piece. The problem is; the low C in what was the left hand part is still a major third below the low E of the guitar. We'll have to do something about that.
(ps - the overlapping of the G in the right hand melody with the A and G at the top of the left hand melody is a crack one has to smooth over in performance).


Example 3
Leopold Godowsky's arrangements of Chopin for the left hand only have been invaluable in suggesting ways in which the character of a piece can be preserved even while condensing it drastically. A technique that he is often forced to use is to eliminate the first note of the left hand part, before jumping down to continue the lower melody (see his version of etude 6, op.10). I've also seen Mahler use this left hand rest in arrangements of his own pieces for piano. If you do utilise this approach, the next problem is that you then have a melody whose lowest note is the fifth of the chord, and we don't want this to sound like a 6-4 chord. One advantage is that left hand parts like this are often spread out in the lower register, meaning that you can replace a melody such as C₂,G₂,C₃,G₃... with rest,C₃,E₃,G3... with only a small change in the character of the melody. In this case that isn't possible, so...


Example 4
We reinstate the root, but an octave above. This might be better, but in my opinion this is a rather ugly solution, with the low G still being conspicuous after the root.


Example 5
This is my preferred solution to this particular problem, a quasi-turnaround of a B after the root, creating a more sinuous melodic effect in keeping with the curvaceous feel of the piece. The G at the end of the bar is retained to create a stronger dominant effect.

Romantic coincidence

The top search terms for my blog at this moment (discounting 'blogspot' and 'the') are 'chopin' and 'prelude', primarily due to me posting an early arrangement of No.20 in C minor, which is obviously being searched out by hungry guitarists. Those close to me might recognise a mild significance in the fact that this is still the most searched for aspect of the blog, but to me it's generally worth noting that today, during the ridiculous storms that battered London, I spent a little time working on my arrangement of No.15 in D flat; the 'raindrop' prelude.